Confessed killer of Riley Fox dies in prison

The man responsible for the 2004 murder of 3-year-old Riley Fox has died in prison.

Scott Eby, 52, confessed to Riley’s murder six years after the child’s body was found at a Will County Forest Preserve site in Wilmington.

In June of 2004, Eby walked into the Fox home in Northcrest during overnight hours through an open back door, looking to burglarize the home, when he abducted the sleeping Riley from the family room sofa.

In his confession, Eby said he had taken Riley to Forsythe Woods and sexually assaulted her, then decided to kill her after the bandana covering his face slipped.

Riley’s body was discovered in Forked Creek. Her official cause of death was drowning.

Her father, Kevin Fox, was arrested for the murder, but was cleared eight months later by DNA evidence. Fox later won a lawsuit against Will County investigators for that wrongful arrest.

Kevin Fox died in March of this year due to injuries he sustained in a vehicle accident near his home in Arkansas.

Eby, who was in prison on a different sexual assault conviction, confessed and pled guilty to Riley’s murder in 2010. Eby was serving a life sentence at the Menard Correctional Center in downstate Illinois at the time of his death on Dec. 7, which was announced via the state’s online inmate notification system and confirmed to the media via the Will County State’s Attorney’s office.

His cause of death was not immediately released.